Mineral makeup for tweens: sweet, soft and skin-smart

What does my daughter remember most from her big roller skating birthday party extravaganza?

The fact that I let her wear makeup, something that’s never happened before.

Not my makeup, of course. This new find for tweens and teens is adorable, made from especially gentle ingredients, and won’t send your little lady out looking like, um…a lady of the night.

EyeDoll Chatter is the brainchild of two Atlanta sisters who wanted to create a truly interactive mineral makeup experience for girls. Available in cute, self-contained kits for eyes, cheeks, or lips, everything is skin-safe, food-safe, all-natural, and free from the big baddies: talcs, dyes, parabens, and petroleum products. Believe me–I double-checked the ingredients before letting my birthday girl go crazy.

The idea is that each kit comes with a brush and six twist-top containers labeled with super cute Twitter-like icons. The three makeup colors in each kit can be mixed with the three different flavors (for the lip glosses) or different scents (for the eye shadows and blushes) to create tons of personalized cosmetics. They also offer a free app for girls to share their makeup creations via Facebook, Twitter, and texting (if yours are into that sort of thing).

I tried the Hello Kissy lip gloss kit and the My Besties Pink eye shadow set, and I would recommend both. The colors stay muted and sweet no matter how heavily you pile them on, and the scents and flavors are high quality. The lip gloss ingredients are the same as my grownup natural lip balms, and the smell and taste are far superior to those Lip Smackers that smell like chemical glop to me. (Sorry, y’all, but have you read the ingredients lately? Scary!)

As much as I love them, these are not toy cosmetics that you can hand to your eight-year-old and forget about. The eye shadow containers don’t have shakers, so once the lids are off, if your kiddos aren’t careful, your floor will quickly resemble a fairy murder scene. And although the boxes are adorable, they’re not the sort of thing that a girl could slip into a dainty purse. And, yes, the price is higher than drugstore kid brands, because the ingredients are of the same caliber as all-natural mineral makeup for adults. But if you have a tween aching to express herself with some sparkle, or you want to make a slumber party seriously special (with some Q-tips, not shared brushes!), then these kits are a fantastic choice.

And the My Besties palette is great for hazel and green eyes on adults, too. *wink* -Delilah